Krugman on Obama's mandate

By Libby Spencer

Building on Digby's call to action, our honorary DFH Paul Krugman works the new narrative. Read it all but here's a few choice grafs:

Maybe the best way to highlight the importance of that fact is to contrast this year’s campaign with what happened four years ago. In 2004, President Bush concealed his real agenda. He basically ran as the nation’s defender against gay married terrorists, leaving even his supporters nonplussed when he announced, soon after the election was over, that his first priority was Social Security privatization. That wasn’t what people thought they had been voting for, and the privatization campaign quickly devolved from juggernaut to farce.

This year, however, Mr. Obama ran on a platform of guaranteed health care and tax breaks for the middle class, paid for with higher taxes on the affluent. John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a “redistributor,” but America voted for him anyway. That’s a real mandate. [...]

What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” — has never rung truer.

It's too early to tell how an Obama administration, (gee doesn't that still sound like a miracle), will play out. I continue to harbor some residual fear that he will move too much to the center right, but he's surprised me many times in the last two years over this hellishly long contest. For the first time in decades, I really do feel there's hope for a more progressive future. It's a good feeling.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)